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    Across A Fluky Sea
    Across A Fluky Sea
    Across A Fluky Sea
    Ebook58 pages54 minutes

    Across A Fluky Sea

    By Ken Spillman

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    About this ebook

    It's the early 1990s and Gus Watson is learning how tough it is to become an adult. In three linked narratives, Across a Fluky Sea navigates four tumultuous years as Gus grapples with the vulnerabilities of love, the disintegration of his closest childhood friend, and a growing awareness that youth is nothing if not fleeting. This novella is a haunting exploration of life, love and loss from acclaimed author Ken Spillman. "Brilliantly written … Spillman creates his characters with sensitivity, and sketches their experiences with great craft and skill.’ – The West Australian
    LanguageEnglish
    PublishereBooks2go, Inc.
    Release dateMar 4, 2020
    ISBN9781618130556
    Across A Fluky Sea
    Author

    Ken Spillman

    KEN SPILLMAN holds a PhD in history and is a prolific Australian author. His work spans many genres.

    Read more from Ken Spillman

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      Book preview

      Across A Fluky Sea - Ken Spillman

      Newspapers

      PART 1: 1990

      Midnight call

      Selena’s voice was low and her anxiety echoed down the line. I’d bombed out at eleven, and the phone had jolted me out of a dream.

      I shivered into the receiver. ‘Where are you?’

      ‘I’m sorry it’s so late. I’m in a telephone box, just across the road. I drove past and saw that your lights were out but I need to talk.’

      Something had to be up with Johnny. I pulled on shorts and was wrestling with a windcheater when I opened the door. Selena was on the last flight of stairs. Her scuffs made a dry, scraping noise on the concrete, and she swung her arms across her body like a skater. She smiled at her breathlessness, but the smile fell quickly.

      ‘Sorry, Gus,’ she said, as I switched on the kettle.

      Selena pulled out a chair and sat silently at the dining table, leafing distractedly through a library book in the muddle of the evening’s study. I poured the coffee, knowing our drill. I was unable to stifle a yawn.

      ‘Sorry,’ she said again.

      After clearing some space on the table I slouched in the chair opposite, thankful she’d been sitting away from an open exercise book filled with scrawled poems. Most were unfinished, written secretly for her.

      ‘I’m pregnant, Gus. I need to know if you’d take me to have an abortion.’

      She spoke evenly and pushed her hair back, exposing a rim of paler skin. Her eyes lifted, checking my reaction. I realised that I was holding in breath so let it out gently, through my nose, hoping not to confess shock. Selena released her hair to warm her hands on the coffee mug and it cascaded around her face.

      ‘I’ve made the appointment, and there’s no one else I feel I can ask.’ She looked down, folding dog-ears in the library book.

      ‘Does John …?’

      She nodded. Her nostrils flared in an effort not to cry. ‘Johnny knows.’

      In all the time that we’d been friends, Selena had never seemed so beautiful. I didn’t want that, didn’t want to leave myself so open. Especially now.

      ‘You know how he is.’ There was emotion in her voice, but no resentment or anger. We all made allowances for John, but Selena made too many. ‘I’ve booked for Wednesday morning,’ she said.

      The arrangements were made and we listened as car doors slammed in the car park below. Drunken voices argued about a key and eventually found their way into one of the ground floor units.

      ‘How’s uni?’ Selena asked. I grimaced, and we exchanged weary smiles. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘after that feeble attempt to change the subject, I’d better go.’

      We hugged our goodbye, her hair soft against my stubble. Then she started down the stairs.

      Later I remembered the businesslike set of her shoulders, the way she turned and called in a stage whisper: ‘Thanks, Gus.’

      All the Johnnies

      Inside, I flicked the light off and curled up on the couch, unable to think about sleep. An ambulance panicked its way along Roberts Road, and from the other direction I heard the last Fremantle train on its arc into the city.

      Selena was right: I knew how he was. Maybe she thought she knew him too, better than anybody. But she was eighteen, and we were going on twenty-one and went back a long way. When Selena was still at school, Johnny and I were doing pubs and clubs, swigging scotch on the beach at Margaret River, hanging around with her brother Jim, Scotty McManus, Mick Mahon and the rest of the boys. We’d been through twelve years of school together, and for a while Johnny and I even lived around the corner from each other. As kids, we’d mucked around with bikes, yo-yos and frisbees, wearing the fuzz off tennis balls with made-up games. We talked football like veterans, and once saved all summer to go halves in a football, taking turns at keeping it overnight.

      All through primary school John had been revered, even by older boys. He was wiry and athletic, and kids liked the way he served up cheek. To the teachers he was ‘Little Reilly’, brother of brainy Eamon and cousin of Declan, the school's best long distance runner, so he always seemed to get away with more than the rest of us. In Year 4, someone heard that Johnny was having remedial help with spelling, but he was so popular that it was whispered around once and never

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